How to Rig an Election
Written: Apr 06 '08
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Learn a lot about political dirty tricks
Cons: You have to decide what to believe, and what's been left out.
The Bottom Line: If you're interested in politics at all, read this book.
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| DavidWeisman's Full Review: Allen Raymond - How to Rig an Election: Confession... |
Allen Raymond worked on the election campaigns of many Republican candidates before he went to jail. He tells about them here, possibly leaving out only undiscovered criminal activity and the odd perjury.
Outline
This is structured sort of like an autobiography, with a page or so for family and early life, a few pages for Raymond’s education in political campaigning, most of the book for his career as a political operative, and a few chapters for his work with the Feds, trial, and sentencing.
Two things stuck with me about the early material. He didn’t need to do this for a living – he was a rich kid with a trust. He kind of liked the feeling of being badass, knowing he was training as a mercenary to help whoever paid him win – rather than help make a better world.
His first campaign was a local election, and direct mail played a big part in it. He specialized in saying misleading things about his candidate’s opponent, some of which were nasty and personal. If he actually lied he doesn’t tell us about it – that might be illegal. He says his candidate complained to him about how the direct mail people were out of control, and he wanted the dirtier tricks stopped because some of the people who knew the truth and despised him (the candidate) for the misleading tricks were neighbors. Raymond says he encouraged this while pretending to try and stop it, because that was what was needed to get the candidate elected – and he liked the feeling of being an aggressive win-at-all-costs mercenary. I’m not sure if Steve Corodemus (he names names) was really as innocent as Raymond pretends or if he’s one of the few people Raymond still feels loyalty to – but I wouldn’t vote for him, a really capable and trustworthy assemblyman would have found out and put a stop to this garbage.
No matter how you feel about Raymond, there’s a lot of interesting stuff in here – and he does learn he wasn’t as smart as he thought he was – though the lesson doesn’t completely make it to his core. His campaigns get bigger and bigger, but he’s not good at making friends, and he never succeeds in getting in with the Bush-Rove segment of the Republican party. He ends up starting his own phone bank business. Finally the Texas mafia wants his services – to jam the Democratic phone banks. Who better for a legally dubious enterprise than someone disposable, who they don’t really like? When it goes bad he explains that he’s a loyal Republican – unless the Feds send him to prison and the Republicans don’t help him, in which case he sings like a canary – which is what happens.
Overview
The most interesting part of this book is trying to decide what to believe – and what’s been left out. Sometimes he sounds as if he feels the Republican culture corrupted him. Other times he sounds as if he still believes what he told himself at the time. Every workable dirty trick he fails to do is money stolen from the people who pay his salary. Ideals are fine, unless they keep you from getting elected, and you can’t put them into effect. He doesn’t say what happens if you get into office but honest people don’t trust you because they know how you were elected.
He knows the Republicans hate him, so he tells Democrats, his only new friends, what he thinks they want to hear. Beware, but still read this book.
Recommended:
Yes
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Member: David Weisman
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